Fresno Unified adopts $1.66 billion budget amid board tensions

Fresno Unified’s board approved a $1.66 billion budget Wednesday night, but the real vote was over trust. Trustee Susan Wittrup cast the lone no vote and accused Superintendent Misty Her of fostering backroom deals, a charge Board President Veva Islas publicly rejected as the district adopted the spending plan by a 6-1 margin.

The numbers behind the budget show what is at stake in Fresno County classrooms. Fresno Unified has already eliminated 172 teaching positions as it worked to close a deficit that had ballooned to $89.5 million, and district cuts have also hit counselors, attendance specialists, foster youth services and interventions aimed at chronic absenteeism. In May, trustees approved final layoff notices affecting 196 classified employees and 78 certified positions, part of a broader reduction that March reporting put at 383.8 full-time equivalent positions when retirements and vacancies were included.

Those cuts landed in California’s third-largest school district, which serves 70,163 students this school year, including 11,669 English learners, or 16.6 percent of enrollment. That scale makes even modest budget changes matter in Fresno, where a staffing change in one program can ripple across campuses from northwest Fresno to southeast neighborhoods and where attendance-based funding means weak daily turnout quickly turns into fewer dollars. To explain the crisis, the district also launched a public budget-updates page and tied the effort to the goals-and-guardrails work it began in May 2024.

The finances are still not settled. Recent projections showed a new-year deficit that ranged from $77 million in February to an $88 million shortfall forecast for the next school year, underscoring how quickly the district’s outlook has shifted even after it worked out of an earlier hole. The state did add help in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May Revision, including $33 million in ongoing unrestricted funding and about $19.5 million in one-time money for Fresno Unified, but those dollars did not erase the structural pressure from enrollment decline, labor costs and shrinking reserves.

That is why the coming bargaining round with the Fresno Teachers Association is likely to test whether the board can turn a budget vote into real stability. Fresno Unified has already used an early retirement incentive that the district said could save $56 million over five years, and a separate fall 2025 retirement plan was projected to save more than $35 million over five years. For families, the measure of success will not be Wednesday’s vote but whether classrooms stay staffed, supports reach students who are falling behind and the district avoids another round of emergency cuts.